Pets

Pets are typically what we, as system administrators, spend our time looking after. They are traditional bare metal servers or virtual machines:

• We name each server as you would a pet. For example, app-server01.domain.com and database-server01.domain.com.
• When our pets are ill, you will take them to the vets. This is much like you, as a system administrator, would reboot a server, check logs, and replace the faulty components of a server to ensure that it is running healthily.
• You pay close attention to your pets for years, much like a server. You monitor for issues, patch them, back them up, and ensure they are fully documented.

There is nothing much wrong with running pets. However, you will find that the majority of your time is spent caring for them—this may be alright if you have a few dozen servers, but it does start to become unmanageable if you have a few hundred servers.